


Deja Vu

by Rhianona



Category: CSI, CSI:NY, Harry Potter - Fandom, Highlander
Genre: Gen, Genderbending, fics I'm totally not writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-05
Updated: 2011-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianona/pseuds/Rhianona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of fics I'm totally not writing...except I probably will. Always-a-girl![character] fics in four different fandoms: Harry Potter, CSI, CSI:NY, and Highlander</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry Potter

Bethany thinks it’s a joke at first; it’s only when Lavender and Parvati assure her it can’t be that she starts to panic. She runs off to the library and starts researching because there has to be an answer she can live with in the books Hermione loves so much.

There’s not. Or there is but it doesn’t make her feel any better.

She’s a Potter and the last of her line. A Pureblood line for all that she’s a half-blood. Sirius’ not-so-secret adoption of her makes her the Black heiress as well. And all of that adds up to a very eligible bride.

It’s no wonder the Purebloods are sending her letters of interest. And maybe if the first one she received hadn’t been from Malfoy, she’d be less freaked out about it all.

As it is, she can’t help but wonder what else Dumbledore forgot to tell her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In most girl!Harry fics, writers change Harry to either a feminized version of Harry, some sort of flower, or a cringe-worthy Mary Sue-esque name. I went to the site I use for names and found the meaning of 'Harry' and then, using that meaning, asked for a list of names. Bethany showed up on that list and I decided it worked. Technically, it means 'house of figs' which doesn't really evoke 'home ruler' as Harry does, but I like the idea of it. And it's not Harriet, Harri, Henrietta, [random flower name] or [random cringe-worthy name, probably of Japanese origin].


	2. CSI:NY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CSI:NY -- Dani Messer never wanted to be the girlfriend, or the wife, or the mistress. Spoilers for Season 1 and 2 of CSI:NY.

Dani Messer never wants to be the ‘girlfriend’ or the ‘wife’ or - god forbid - the ‘mistress.’ She doesn’t want to learn how to keep her mouth shut when her ‘man’ - and she hates that word so fucking much - goes out to conduct his business. So when Sonny Sassone starts looking at her with that gleam in his eye that can only mean trouble and when her brother pushes at her until she finally gets the hint, she runs.

She tells herself it’s just a coincidence that it all comes to a head just as she’s about to leave for college but a part of her - the part that still runs to Louie when she needs something fixed, the part that doesn’t want to believe that her brother’s in Tanglewood and that’s why he warns her of Sonny’s interest in her - knows that it’s not. And so she doesn’t bother to leave anything in her room that she’ll want to see again. She packs up all her clothes and books and childhood memories and goes.

Between working in the college library and babysitting for professors, Dani manages to earn and save enough money that she can afford to sublet a tiny room in a crappy apartment shared by five others for the summer. Her chemistry professor offers her work in his lab and while the pay isn’t great and she’s essentially doing scut work for the grad students, it’s enough to pay for her groceries and books for the next year. It helps that the library keeps her on for the summer too.

Her sophomore year, she takes a forensics anthropology course and she gets hooked. Not necessarily with the anthropology part — she doesn’t like studying the bones all that much — but she can totally get behind the forensics aspect of the class. The next semester, she signs up for an introduction to forensics course and falls in love. She gains a new advisor, who gives her a book list to read for the summer and helps her pick suitable classes for her new major. And while this summer passes the same as the last (Mommy doesn’t even bother pushing for her to come home this time and Dani is okay with that… really.) she spends her free time with her nose stuck in one of those books.

By her third year, she’s living off campus with a group of grad students from the chem lab. It should feel strange to live with people older than her, but somehow it doesn’t. Of course, Dani has worked with each of them for the last two years so they know she’s not the typical undergraduate student. She can’t afford to be because she can’t return home if she fails. She spends her days immersed in chemistry and forensics and her nights bar tending. She decides she hates drunk students because they’re a pain in the ass and don’t tip well. Still, she makes enough to pay her part of the rent and that’s what matters. Mommy and Louie (though she’s not supposed to know it’s from him) send her a little bit of money each month, but it’s not enough to live on by itself.

That summer, her forensics advisor helps her get an internship with a local crime lab. She learns the difference between being a lab tech and being a CSI. Learns how tedious the work can be (really is) and how even the tiniest bit of evidence can lead to a conviction. No one, from the head of the lab to the most junior lab tech, hides the ball on how utterly soul draining the job can be, but they also all agree that being able to find the evidence and prove the case against a suspect is one of the biggest highs in life. At least for them.

Dani does well enough that the lab gives her an in-school internship for her last year of college. She barely has any free time and if she had more of a social life, it would have taken a hit. As it is, her roommates tease her about never seeing her except in the lab or at the coffee pot, but she just shrugs and grins and keeps to her schedule. She believes in repaying loyalty so she won’t quit the chem lab job because her professor had done her a favor by letting her work there that first summer; the library staff is great at accommodating her schedule and giving her extra hours when she needs it; and if she wants to keep on paying rent, she needs the job at the bar. Really, the only way she manages the internship is that she can use it in exchange for class credits.

Her last year goes by very quickly. She talks to her advisors and the people she works with at the lab and they help her decide what she wants to do after she graduates. Despite her family, she doesn’t want to leave New York; if she wants to work as a CSI, she needs to go to the police academy first, work her way up to Detective, and hope she can network her way into one of the labs. Dani tries not to think what it’ll mean to be a part of the NYPD, the way Mommy and Aunt Teresa had both grown quiet when she had mentioned she’s thinking about going into law enforcement. (‘But wouldn’t you rather find a nice boy to marry, Daniella?’ Mommy asks, her voice tense with an emotion Dani doesn’t want to identify because it’ll be too depressing. And when Aunt Teresa gushes about how she found the perfect man for Dani to meet and then she won’t have to work, she bites her tongue because she likes Aunt Teresa and Aunt Teresa has never shunned her like the rest of her family has, but Dani knows she’s disappointing people she loves and she _hates_ it.) And while she studies for the entrance exam and waits for the results, she can only hope she’s not making a mistake, that she won’t fail because if she does, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.

Because the thing is, Dani Messer has been running away from her family and the way she grew up since Louie pushed her away. She hasn’t seen home in four years, hasn’t seen anyone but Mommy and Aunt Teresa and some of the cousins on a few rare occasions. She worked her way through college because a college education is the only thing that’ll keep her _away_. Away from Tanglewood and Yonkers and Sonny Sassone and everything she never wants for her life.

When it seems to work, when she gets into the academy and graduates first in her class, and when Mac Taylor picks her for his lab the week after she sends in her application after she makes Detective and he takes her under his wing, she thinks she’s lucky. And if people snicker about Mac’s ‘harem’ behind their backs, she knows Stella’ll put paid to that idea and Aiden’ll taze them in the balls (or tease them until they forget their names). She likes her job and likes the people she works with, and while she doesn’t know if Stella actually likes her, she knows the other woman has her back.

But then everything goes to hell and Dani is left wondering how everything had gotten there. Sonny comes back and all of a sudden Mac wants to know what she knows about Tanglewood and she tells him because he asks and he’s her boss and mentor and he needs her knowledge to solve the case. She hates how he looks at her afterwards, at how he believes the shit Sonny spouts as he’s taken to booking.

Not long after that, there’s Minhas and the way Mac looks at her — the disgust and disappointment — doesn’t leave her for a long time. And when rumors start up about her being a Messer and everything that that means, she tries her best to ignore it but it’s difficult. (Aiden and Flack take her out and get her shitfaced and they listen to her as she babbles and assure her they don’t believe any of the shit people have been saying about her and in general make her feel a little bit less bad about it all.)

Just when she thinks everything is back on track, a DB is found at Giants Stadium, and along with it, a cigarette with her DNA on it and everything is ripped open again. Mac asks her why it’d be there and she shrugs and says she doesn’t know why. He asks why she had told him she never ran with Tanglewood and she looks at him blankly.

“I wasn’t. I never wanted to be the wife or the girlfriend or the mistress, Mac,” she tries to explain. But her brother’s part of Tanglewood and she remembers the night when she got dragged on a trip to A.C. until Louie had all but forced her away. How she’d taken the car and driven back home and a week later, how Louie pushed her away for good. How that one night had put her on her current path.

He doesn’t understand and she looks at him a bit lost. How does he not understand that if she had stayed at home, hadn’t left (run) when Louie sent her away, she’d be a wife, or a girlfriend, or a mistress? Why doesn’t he understand that Tanglewood has no use for her unless she becomes one of those and she never wanted that. Not for herself.

(And she thinks Aiden would have understood and she misses the other woman with a fierceness she hasn’t felt in a long while, wishes the other woman was still here, still had her back because while Dani sees her when she can, it’s not the same as it was before. Before Mac fired her. Stella might get it too but Dani’s never trusted her with her emotions so she doesn’t even bother trying to explain it to her.)

In the end, Louie saves her again but this time, the consequences are bad and he ends up in a coma. She sees Mommy and dad and Louie’s wife and his kids for the first time in years. Mommy hugs her, her arms folding over Dani’s torso like wings on a bird before releasing her with barely any pressure, sniffling into a handkerchief and trying to look stoic, as if her son’s not in the hospital after clearing her daughter’s name. As if Louie hadn’t broken the unspoken code they all live by. And Carolyn glares at her and keeps her kids away from Dani as if she’d hurt them like she (inadvertently) hurt Louie.

“How you doing, Messer?” Flack asks her when she passes him on her way into the lab, wearing yesterday’s clothes, her hair a mess, her eyes red from tears. She shrugs because she really doesn’t have an answer. He tells her things’ll get better and she pretends to believe him.

She never wanted to be the girlfriend or the wife or the mistress… but now? She can’t help but wonder how things would be different if she had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure this is as much as I'll ever write in this universe. It really began and ended with the idea of Dani never wanting to be a girlfriend, wife or mistress, with the implication of if she had stayed in Yonkers, she'd have ended up as one of those for the mafia.
> 
> CSI:NY is very, very vague when it comes to NYC geography and character bios. It is actually very humorous and, at times, infuriating for me to watch it and see the inconsistencies. Danny implies he went to Roosevelt High School, and that he grew up in the same neighborhood as Tanglewood (which is an actual gang connected to one of the five families in NY.) in season 1. If that is true, he grew up in Yonkers. Yet, bios list him as growing up in Long Island or Staten Island (the actor playing the character grew up in SI), or Queens. For my purposes and in my personal canon, Danny grew up in Yonkers.
> 
> The NYPD requires it's CSI's (which aren't actually called that but something else) to be Detectives, which means Danny would have had to do patrol before making Detective and then applying to one of the labs. According to my research, it's very difficult to get into one of the forensics labs and requires a great deal of networking. Canon implies that Mac picked Danny after he graduated first in his class at the academy. I find that unlikely and think the scenario I present in this -- that is, that Danny worked his way to Detective and then applied to the lab and that was when Mac picked him -- makes more sense. I vaguely remember a later season episode that implies Danny was a patrol officer before he worked in the lab but early season did not talk about it.


	3. CSI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CSI: Greer Sanders is happy to be who she is.

Greer Sanders knows she’s brilliant. She has no problem letting everyone and anyone know that too. She dresses how she wants, listens to loud music and dances around to it while processing DNA, and flirts with whoever comes into her lab. She’s pretty sure the only reason Brass agreed to hire her was the stunning evaluations San Francisco and New York sent along with her because it certainly wasn’t because of her clothing or personality. She doesn’t mind if people thinks she’s weird or a geek or whatever. The way she looks has no bearing on her abilities as a DNA tech and it is without a shred of conceit that she can boast of her status as one of the best in the country within two years of working in the Vegas lab. She knows she can move elsewhere without too much difficulty but she likes Vegas and loves working the graveyard shift under Brass. Later, when Grissom takes over, she just shrugs and drops off a mug of her Blue Hawaiian coffee with the Captain. Good coffee makes her feel better — almost as much as sugar — so she figures it’ll help any ill feelings he might have.

The people she works with get used to her pretty quickly: the whole shift place bets on how long it’ll take for her to change her hairstyle or color within three months of her joining the lab and the CSIs grow used to playing ‘Name that Chemical Compound’ with her. She and the rest of the techs bet on exactly how and when she’ll fluster each of the CSIs who come to her for results — she becomes quite skilled at saying the right thing at the exact moment she planned so she’ll win the pool. Hey — she prefers _not_ paying for breakfast when she can avoid it. Sometimes, she’s even nice enough to share her spoils, usually in the form of good coffee.

She’s actually very stingy with her coffee; not only does it cost her forty bucks a pound, but no one really appreciates it as much as she does. She’ll never admit it but the coffee she hides in all sorts of out-of-the-way places in the lab _isn’t_ the Blue Hawaiian she prefers, but an inferior blend. Still superior to whatever crap the department buys, but not the really good stuff. No one has really caught onto that though so she keeps quiet — she has some discretion at times, as hard as it might be to believe. No, she keeps the Blue Hawaiian for herself and the rare times she feels like someone else might deserve a cup. And that? She keeps close to her person during her shift and in her locker when she’s out.

Call her a coffee snob and she’ll just smile and agree. There are far worse habits she could have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have real plans for a fic with a girl!Greg. I suspect it will become the fic that will eat my brain this year. The hardest part is making sure Greer doesn't overly resemble Abby Sciuto from NCIS. Fortunately, I know exactly what Greer looks like and how she dresses and it's not similar to Abby.
> 
> Why Greer? Surprisingly, it is the only female name that is even tangentially connected to the name "Greg." I almost didn't opt for it because it is very rarely used but in the end decided I had a better background story for why Greer than a Norwegian name (since Greg Sanders is very proud of his Norwegian heritage). In this 'verse, Greer's parents are big classic movie buffs and named her after the actress Greer Garson. If she'd been a boy, they would have named her Greg, after Greg Peck. Of course, if Greg was more of a Norwegian name, I would have gone the female Norwegian names route but it really isn't. Instead, Greer has very Norwegian middle names (Birgitta Dagrun Hojem).
> 
> Anyway, expect an actual fic out of this.


	4. Highlander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Oldest Immortal's a woman named Isis.

Isis has remained hidden for centuries. The last time the Watchers had a glimpse of her — had confirmed that she still lived and hadn’t lost her head like so many of her age had — America had just gained her freedom for her colonial overlords. A part of her had wanted to curse the observant maid who had figured out her secret before she was ready to reveal it to the girl, but another part of her, the one that had felt relief at being able to flee to another country and hide behind yet another persona, was just happy that she had given the Watchers enough to keep the myth of her existence alive.

It’s a game to her: give the Watchers just enough glimpses of her, let her myth grow and fester so that when an Immortal or a Watcher finds her, she can’t be identified right away, if at all. Misdirection and misinformation help her keep her head and she’s loathe to lose any advantage she can keep.

When the Watchers recruit her, she almost refuses but she doesn’t want to miss the opportunity to hide herself even further, to keep as safe as possible. She’s even begun to consider letting her name fade into twilight, let everyone believe she lost her head centuries ago and the rumors of her continued existence are just that: gossip and unsubstantiated.

Then Kalas goes on his rampage and blurs the line between Watcher and Immortal when he finds Don Salazar and kills him. He dies to keep her history secret and that’s when everything goes pear-shaped. Watchers and Immortals alike want him dead and she worries that there’ll be another Horton situation.

Dawson phones to warn her he’s sending someone to watch over her and she knows — even before he confirms it — that he’s sending _his_ Immortal: Duncan MacLeod. And for the first time in a long while she doesn’t know what to do.

Darius and Rebecca, before their deaths, chided her about her habit of coasting through life instead of getting involved with the people around her. She has never met the younger MacLeod but she has a feeling that if she does, she can say goodbye to her quiet existence.

Once upon a time, the thought alone would have had her running to her next id.

She stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I give myself a 25% chance of actually writing this. I've had the idea for a while and I think it would be fun to play with canon events if Methos was a girl instead of a guy... especially his interactions with Mac. I mean, there's Amanda, who is over 1000, but Mac treats her as someone to protect. Rebecca is really only there for an episode and as awesome as she is, dies. And then there is Cassandra but she is terribly one-note and crazy and again falls under someone Mac protects, for all that is much younger than her. But yeah... I'm not sure if I'll ever actually write this but here's a kernel of the idea.


End file.
